Traveller crime gang in alliance with Christy Kinahan cartel

The feared Christy Kinahan crime cartel has teamed up with a notorious gang controlled by a multi-millionaire Traveller crime boss.

The gang, which specialises in high end car theft, is believed to be based out of Meath.

Sources say that the gang have been providing the Kinahan mob with top class motors.

"These include top-of-the range Audis, BMW's and Range Rovers which have been either shipped out of the country in containers or simply driven out by people paid to do this.

"The Traveller gang are actually doing a lot of business with the Kinahan network in terms of drugs trafficking, so it is an arrangement that seems to be working very well," a source told the Herald.

The Traveller gang are reported to be involved in car theft, drug dealing, armed robberies and cash-in-transit robberies.

A notorious Meath-based Traveller criminal who is originally from Finglas has been acting as a "middle man" between the two gangs.

Aside from serving numbers spells in Irish prisons the Traveller thug who is aged in his 40s was recently hit with a huge bill by Criminal Assets Bureau.

As well as being connected with foreign and Traveller gangs, he is also a close associate of jailed Finglas gangland figure Alan 'Fatpuss' Bradley.

Gardai have established that dozens of high-end cars that have been stolen here over the past year have been moved out of the country hidden in ship containers underneath scrap, tyres and discarded computers and even disguised in bigger vehicles on cargo ships from Dublin Port.

Sources told The Herald that a number of 'kingpins' have been identified, including a Nigerian criminal who moves between Dublin and London and a Lithuanian crimelord based in the Tyrrelstown area of west Dublin.